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| Mimosa by William-Adolphe Bouguereau |
The acacia tree on the hill behind our house was my sanctuary, you see. Because the tree could not be seen from our house or any other houses on our street—to get up to it, I had to walk up a steep, little dirt path that wound around the side of the hill until I reached the plateau where the large, magnificent tree stood—I would retreat there when I wanted to be alone.
In early childhood, I just thought of the acacia tree as a landmark. When my father, my brother, and I went hiking through those hills behind our house—their dry dusty slopes dotted with native plants, mostly low shrubs like sage, manzanita, and monkey flower—the path we took from our house up to the ridge led past the acacia tree. My father said, “You know you’re going the right way when you see this tree.”
Then, a few years later, the Bel Air fire surged through our neighborhood, having started on a street that was just over the hill from our house. We had to evacuate our house—my brother and I stood on the street watching the flames blazing high up on the hill in a state of awe as my mother packed up our VW bug with my father’s artwork and our new pajamas. My father didn’t join us at my aunt’s house near the beach until late that night—he had joined the fire fighters as they fought to save our house along with the others on our street. I woke up when he burst in through the front door of my aunt’s house with the good news that our house had been saved. After we returned home, we three set off on an exploratory hike to see the damage the fire had done. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was so glad to see that the acacia tree had survived untouched—it was tall and grand, looking like it had been there forever. Up on the ridge, though, all that remained of the shrubs were bare black branches, like plant skeletons made of charcoal. Returning home after our walk through that surreal and desolate landscape, the tree became more than just a landmark; it was a signpost that meant I was returning to safety on the path home.
As I grew older, I began to crave privacy. My mother didn’t like it if I looked sad or depressed —she called it “feeling sorry for yourself”. But pretending to be happy when I wasn’t just wasn’t an option for me when I was feeling discouraged, confused, or even disheartened by the part of my life that took place in the “real world” of our local public school, which was in the wealthy part of Westwood. One big thing I was trying to deal with was the intense crush I had on one of the boys in my second-grade class. He was a wiry, athletic boy, with olive skin and black hair, who was half a school year ahead of me, and he had been so kind to me when I was assigned to the seat next to his. When I seem confused, he patiently explained second grade things to me. And at recess I would always line up to play tether ball with him—he was the best athlete in the class, and I was one of the worst—and when I lost to him, he always said, “good try.” I just melted at those two sweet words. When I was at home, I thought about him constantly. But I was just a kid! It didn’t seem right that I should be so obsessed with this other kid. And I knew that any adult would just laugh at me if I talked about it, so I kept it completely to myself.
Because we lived in a mid-century modern glass house, where no window coverings were allowed, it was hard to find a way to be alone with my thoughts. I had my own bedroom, but it wasn’t private because even if I closed the bedroom door, the floor to ceiling windows on the west side faced the deck that spanned the entire front of the house and anyone walking around out there could see right into my bedroom. But I soon figured out that I could go up into the hills by myself.
Before that, I had had gone walking in the hills with my father, my brother, and our dog (my father called us “the farmhouse four” because one time we discovered an old farmhouse in the hills between our canyon and the next one over). And I felt more at home out there in the chapparal than at my grammar school in Westwood. The canyon where we lived, Beverly Glen, was an unconventional neighborhood with a bohemian vibe, where our neighbors were artists, professors, beatniks, and other types of eccentrics. And while some of the other kids at my school were from my neighborhood and the two other canyons east of us, most of students were from more prosperous and conventional families, who lived in large houses with manicured gardens. Although I wasn’t teased that much and I did have school friends, I still felt like an outsider there, especially after school breaks when Westwood kids returned to school with tans they’d gotten lying by the pool in their Palm Springs vacation homes. So, the first thing I would do when I got back to my house in the afternoon was to change out of my school dress—girls were required to wear skirts to school in those days—and slip on my blue jeans, which felt so much more “me” than the costumes I needed to wear for the “real world”.
After realizing I could go up onto the hill by myself, I took my first solo hike. When I reached to the acacia tree, which was just a few minutes from the house, I stopped to take a good look at it. It had an evergreen canopy of delicate fern-like leaves that created a natural shelter from the bright Southern California sun. The ground below the tree was a carpet of soft and spongy fallen leaves. And the tree trunk was strong and solid—I could lean against when I was daydreaming or thinking things over. So, I sat down underneath the acacia tree and heard it whisper “this is the perfect refuge for you,” and I didn’t venture any further.
Walking up the hill to sit under the tree quickly became a regular routine for me. I felt so free up there, so far away from demands and complexities of the real world. But I also have to confess that I knew the boy I had a crush on lived in Benedict canyon, which was just over the hills from the canyon where we lived, so I used to fantasize that he would hike from his house to mine and we walk through the hills together or sit under my acacia the tree and talk, just the two of us, away from the kids in our crowded playground.
My crush on the boy I knew from second grade lasted all the way until sixth grade, but then I developed a new crush, equally intense. And in Junior High I felt even more out of place than I had in grammar school. There were cliques of “popular” girls who all wore the same expensive department store clothes in the same two or three colors of the season and then there was the rest of us. I did have a group of girls who I sat with during lunch and they invited me to all their sleepovers, which I was grateful for. But as someone who was already reading adult novels that I found in my parents’ library and who dreamed of a future where I’d be living an artistic, bohemian life—maybe as a writer in Paris—I felt like I had little in common with them.
So, often, after school, I continued to retreat to my sanctuary, where I felt less alone in the company of a single tree than in the crowded school yard. “This is a safe place,” the tree whispered, “where you can just be yourself.” Then I started taking a pen and notebook up there so I could write, both in a journal that I had started and even my very first short stories. I kept up that practice in high school, too, even after I finally found a few friends who were “kindred spirits,” as Anne always said in my favorite childhood book Anne of Green Gables.
Then, even though I didn’t plan it, I ended up having my first kiss under the tree (a boy who really liked me hitchhiked up into the canyon just to visit me and because it felt awkward to talk with him in our living room, I suggested we go up onto the hill and sit under my tree). That first kiss really wasn’t what I had been imagining—no passion, no fireworks, no melting into a liquid pool of desire, just the strange sensation of someone sticking his wet tongue into my mouth. But the tree whispered, “It’s okay—he’s lovely.” He was so open and easy to talk to and he seemed so taken with me that I kept seeing him, and our relationship soon caught fire. And his parents allowed us to spend time together in his bedroom, which had its own private entrance and a door that locked, so I spent less and less time sitting alone under the acacia tree.
Eventually, as a young adult, I moved away from the area, returning only occasionally to visit my parents. Then, when I was in my early thirties, my parents sold their house in the canyon and moved 400 miles away to the Northern California city where I was living. It was the end of an era for all of us, and I never saw the acacia tree, my secret place of solitude, again.
Recently, as the Palisades fire raged through much of west Los Angeles, as well as monitoring the status of houses of people I knew who still lived in Los Angeles, I kept my eye on the neighborhood where I grew up. Somehow, even though the canyon was very fire prone, in the end, the fire did not reach my childhood home or the hill where my acacia tree lived. I was so relieved to learn that, even though I have no plans to try to see my acacia tree up close again. (Going back to the street where my family lived would mean being confronted with everything I’ve lost—my parents, my childhood home, the hills I loved to explore.)
Although I never bought a bottle of Une Fleur de Cassie because the up-close smell of an acacia tree on my skin all day would always be too much, smelling that perfume awoke within me a strong desire to smell the scent of an acacia tree again. I started by searching my neighborhood for acacia trees and found a few that were planted as street trees. Then, during the month of February, which is when acacia trees bloom, I made a point of visiting every one of the trees I had found. Those brief moments of inhaling the heavenly golden fragrance during a single month every year were delightful, but in the end my craving to smell that fragrance only grew. So, I started another search, this time for a perfume that evoked the fragrance of an acacia tree from a distance. And, eventually, after trying as many perfumes based on acacia and mimosa (a type of acacia) that I could find, I discovered vintage Farnesiana by Caron. Like the perfumed air that wafts from a blooming acacia tree on a golden afternoon, this perfume is sweet, warm, bright, and powdery, with hints of honey, almond, vanilla, citrus peel, and something leafy. And every time I wear it, I take a moment to picture the acacia tree I once loved, sitting alone up on a hill.
by Nina Zolotow
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by Nina Zolotow
• Subscribe to Delusiastic! here • Follow Delusiastic! on Facebook and Nina Zolotow on Substack •
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